With soft display images presented on interactive devices such as personal computers, touch screen tablets, and smart phones, individual name tags that identify the people present in the recorded scene can be provided as an interactive layer. This interactive layer is only visible when the option is selected by the user, or the user touches the screen area relative to the individual of interest, or operates a pointing device to “hover over” the image of an individual. When this is done the name for the individual appears over or adjacent to the individual and disappears when the user returns to the normal viewing mode. This soft display feature provides a way to identify the individuals in a group scene without obscuring the individuals or scene elements with a permanent text overlay. The present invention provides this functionality in hard copy print formats.
Creating “coloring books” and “paint by numbers” drawings by converting consumer generated photos into line drawings is known and demonstrated by U.S. 20080284791A1 FORMING COLORING BOOKS FROM DIGITAL IMAGES. The line-art image is formatted to produce a coloring book image and the coloring book image is printed. In addition, this publication discloses that an index number may be assigned to a corresponding sample color and the index number and color may be printed with the coloring book image to produce a color-by-numbers coloring book image. U.S. 20080284791A1 does reference generating different types of content, such as silhouettes for unsupervised coloring, borders with numbered regions, and using a color photograph and the coloring book line drawing so that the combination image and line drawing comprises color photographic sections substituted for corresponding portions of the monochromatic line-art as part of the graphic user interface (GUI) to verify that the line image shapes and assigned colors are correct.
U.S. 20020003631 SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PRODUCING A COLORING BOOK IMAGE FROM A DIGITAL IMAGE also describes techniques creating “coloring books” and “paint by numbers” drawings by converting consumer generated photos into line drawings color samples are generated from the digital image and a fixed or programmable palette of colors is assigned to image areas of the coloring book image. In addition, an index number is assigned to a corresponding sample color and the index number and color is printed with the coloring book image to produce a color-by-numbers coloring book image. The coloring book or color-by-numbers coloring book images can be combined with stock line-art images to generate a storyboard which may be printed in the form of a coloring book.
However, neither U.S. 20020003631 nor U.S. 20080284791, produces a line defining the outline each individual with the proper configuration indicating the relative depth or row in which the individuals within a scene are placed, or provide a means to identify those individuals without obscuring the original scene content on a printed hardcopy media. Typically this sort of graphically annotated group picture is professionally produced by graphic artists employing a range of specialized skills, image manipulation tools, and can be very costly for the customer. In addition, manually creating an annotated visual reference for use with a hardcopy scene image is a burdensome task requiring a diverse range of image editing and processing skills and is ill-suited for applications involving hardcopy photo products created with the use of smart phones, touch tablets, personal computers, and retail photo kiosks. These types of approaches for creating custom photo products assume that the user has no prior knowledge of image manipulation techniques or has any of the required image editing skills, but has the desire to purchase a custom photo product that meets their needs, easily and affordably. In the case of a retail photo kiosk, the user's time within the retail establishment for a “do-it-yourself” or “while-you-wait” service is inherently limited by the user's willingness to linger in a retail establishment for extended periods of time and the time available for working at the kiosk can be limited due to other users waiting in line for their turns at the device.
What is required is a means of indicating the identities of individuals in group scenes on hardcopy print media when viewed without obscuring, editing, or modifying elements of the original scene. An automatically generated annotated visual scene derived reference for use in association with the group scene, provides the identity information and a visual reference relative to the original scene. The annotated visual reference may be printed on the same side of the same media and adjacent to the original scene, on the back side of the same media as the original scene, in the same or difference scale, on a separate conventional or transparent media used in conjunction with the original scene print, on a multiple image viewing print media incorporating a barrier or lenticular overlay, or on a duplex translucent media with scene image on one side and an aligned and reverse printed annotated visual scene derived reference on the other side of the translucent media.